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The whole idea this thread is about if implemented with have other countries retaliating, and we would lose much of our 2 trillion, 300 billion dollar export market, that supplies 6,800,000 jobs in this country. ...

OldTrader, USA has (for the most part) been attempting to conduct our global trade in a free trade manner. But USA’s wage rates are much greater than those of most nation’s we trade with. That’s to our products’ disadvantage within both USA and foreign markets.

Furthermore, within our present free trade environment, many USA and foreign entities conspire to undermine USA’s foreign trade. The mischief that you fear may in the future hinder USA’s global trade is actually now occurring. USA’s current laws and regulations upholding “pure” free trade policy promotes and rewards such mischief.

Import Certificate policy is substantially but not entirely market driven. The trade policy is primarily driven by the global market prices of the transferable Import Certificates. To the extent feasible, Import Certificate policy denies any entities, (i.e. any includes the federal government), opportunities to hinder USA’s global trade.
Within an Import Certificate environment, with no government action taken, the normal market reactions will penalize entities attempting to undermine an Import Certificate nation’s global trade. The extents of those penalties are likely to be similar to the extents of mischief the perpetrators attempted.

A nation that has adopted an import Certificate policy is more resilient and less vulnerable the undermining of its global trade.

... The move to $15 minimum wage rate so many are demanding, and some places putting into the law, will do one thing. It will force companies to automate, and do away with workers. ...

OldTrader, technological advancements reduce products’ per unit production costs and/or increase the products’ quality. Technological advancement has always been and I expect will always be to USA’s net economic benefit.

... The move to $15 minimum wage rate so many are demanding, and some places putting into the law, will do one thing. It will force companies to automate, and do away with workers.

Lets take an example of how fast food hamburger restaurants are already starting to put in computer order stations with pictures if you cannot read, and the machines take orders, and the money. They are starting to install a automatic hamburger machine, that does everything from taking meat from a hopper, forming the patty, cooking it, and adding the extras, ending putting it in a box. These moves are going to put the majority of the people in that restaurant out of a job.

OldTrader, you’re seeing fewer checkout clerks at the cash-registers of supermarkets but someone is maintaining those inventory files of current items and prices, servicing, repairing, programming and updating the programs for what’s now a vast network of supermarket computer infrastructure.

Try living in Europe and you'll appreciate the relatively low prices of consumer goods in the US.

Part of what the vocal laggers want will lead to higher prices. Has to be.
They want more manufacturing workers when the paradigm is moving toward fewer.
They want higher wages, yet vote against unions and minimum wages. They complain about inflation, but wage inflation is just what they need.
They want to cut foreign imports, which will cut jobs in those sectors, and raises prices for those goods.
Has to be. Industry wouldn't have been off shoring so much in the first place if those imports were more expensive than locally made.

Sounds like [an Import Certificate policy is] exactly what we don't need: a big government program trying to regulate imports versus exports, speculators in the middle making a fortunate buying and selling certificates, companies in the middle who need to import parts in order to make products, consumers getting ripped off by everyone. Do we even really want low tech manufacturing to return to the US. Do we want sweatshop clothing manufacturing and are we willing to pay ten times the amount for those goods? Where are all of these factories going to be build? Out in the country with no workers or in the cities where there is no space? And how does the program work initially? Assuming we even wanted large manufacturing complexes, how does the plan become implemented in the decades it would take to rebuilt the manufacturing infrastructure? To me it sounds like another case of big government trying to do something and messing it up even worse.
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Jrliny, Import Certificate policy is substantially more market rather government driven.
Should I suppose Your comment, “… speculators in the middle making a fortunate buying and selling certificates …” indicates you lack my confidence in the manner that independent competitors will function within the global environment due to USA’s adoption of an Import Certificate market?
I consider that the policy will behave as an indirect but effective subsidy for USA’s exported goods.

All of the direct net expenses due to this policy are passed on to USA purchasers of Imported goods. Thus the cost of imported ingredients or components of any products produced in the USA would be reflected within the prices paid by USA purchasers. If there are no foreign components within the products, there are no price increases; the extent of any price increases to USA purchasers is dependent upon the extent of foreign products attributable to the final products’ prices.

No USA producer is put at any competitive disadvantage due to this trade policy. This policy is of some advantage to any enterprise, including subsidiaries of foreign enterprises) that anywhere in the world compete or aspire to compete with foreign goods.

All of your other questions and comments within your post I’ve quoted are due to your lack of confidence in the behavior of competitive participants within open markets. This policy is based upon the assumption that we all behave in manners that we perceive to be in our individual bests interests.

The problem is that that within USA’s present laws governing our foreign trade, what’s in the best interests of individual transaction participants is in aggregate contrary to the best economic interests of our nation.
When we change USA laws governing our foreign trade and we have changed participant’s evaluations of what is in their individual best interests.

Supposn it works this way. GM-USA makes some parts and collects others made in various locations throughout the world and ships them to GM-Canada. GM-Canada then assembles the parts into an engine and ships the engines to GM-USA for assembly into a car. GM-USA get thousands of parts some made in the US, some made entirely overseas by third party manufacturers and some made in various countries by GM. The final car is assembled and sold. Some are sold in the US, some in Canada, some in other countries which made some of the parts and some in countries like Iceland that were not involved with any of the manufacturing or parts. Who sits and figures out the "Import Certificates"? Who gets certificates for designing and planning in addition to direct manufacturing? If the robots that do the welding are from Japan, does that change the certificate process? I see an army of people involved in this and the government regulations piling up to reach the moon. The government and the army of compliance officers and accountants and lawyers just suck up money and add to the cost of everything consumers purchase.

The whole idea of import certificates is simplistic, not well thought out and confusing beyond belief. And who is going to buy our goods, if we discourage all imports?

Supposn it works this way. GM-USA makes some parts and collects others made in various locations throughout the world and ships them to GM-Canada. GM-Canada then assembles the parts into an engine and ships the engines to GM-USA for assembly into a car. GM-USA get thousands of parts some made in the US, some made entirely overseas by third party manufacturers and some made in various countries by GM. The final car is assembled and sold. Some are sold in the US, some in Canada, some in other countries which made some of the parts and some in countries like Iceland that were not involved with any of the manufacturing or parts. Who sits and figures out the "Import Certificates"? Who gets certificates for designing and planning in addition to direct manufacturing? If the robots that do the welding are from Japan, does that change the certificate process? I see an army of people involved in this and the government regulations piling up to reach the moon. The government and the army of compliance officers and accountants and lawyers just suck up money and add to the cost of everything consumers purchase.

The whole idea of import certificates is simplistic, not well thought out and confusing beyond belief. And who is going to buy our goods, if we discourage all imports?

JrKliny, transferable Import Certificates have a “face” value expressed in U.S dollars, indicating the assessed value of foreign goods that may be imported into the USA upon surrender if the certificate. (Surrendered certificates are cancelled; they cannot be reused).
Any other printing on the certificate is for the purpose of reducing fraud such as counterfeiting. The global market for certificates that may easily be traded electronically. Unless they’re being traded within a government regulated market such as one of the major stock exchanges, how they’re traded is none of the government’s business.
But any person or enterprise that desires to import goods, (i.e. parts and components) into the USA will have to surrender certificates to cover their assessed values before those goods are permitted to be unloaded at a USA port.

Any person or enterprise shipping USA products from the USA would be foolish not to request their goods be assessed. By making such a request, they agree to pay the federal fee rates based upon the assessed value of their shipment being exported from the USA. The aggregate federal fees defray all direct annual federal expenses due this trade policy. That federal fee rate is evaluated and updated each year. The federal fee is not by Law a net source of federal revenue.

Exporters are motivated to request their goods be assessed in order to acquire the transferable Import Certificates. They have good reason to expect that the certificates’ market price rate will be much more than the federal fee rate they will pay.
If some exporters would foolishly not request their goods be assessed, no certificates would be issued for those goods being exported.

I would suppose the U.S. Customs Service would administrate and actually perform the assessments and the U.S. Treasury Department would issue the certificates.

Many of your posts questions are not germane to the Import Certificate proposal.

... The whole idea of import certificates is simplistic, not well thought out and confusing beyond belief. And who is going to buy our goods, if we discourage all imports?

Jrkliny, Import Certificate policy increases prices of imported goods to USA purchasers and serves as an indirect price subsidy for USA goods sold to foreign purchasers. The extents of the increased prices and subsidies are determined by the markets rather than by the federal government.

Tariff could not entirely or almost entirely eliminate USA’s annual trade deficits of goods unless their rates were sufficiently drastic to effectively eliminate almost all USA importing.

Import Certificate policy will CERTAINLY accomplish this regardless of the Import Certificate markets’ rates; (even if the price rate was so low as to only increases prices of imports to USA purchasers by only a penny per item.
The purpose and effect of the Import Certificate policy is to eliminate USA’s chronic annual trade deficits of goods which are a drag upon our GDP and numbers of jobs. It’s not its purpose nor would it be its effect to particularly reduce USA Imports. Although regardless of its consequential effects upon the volumes of USA’s global trade it would be of net benefit to USA’s GDP and numbers of jobs.
The policy serves as indirect subsidy of USA goods sold to foreign purchasers and it not unreasonable to expect that eventually such a policy will increase USA’s aggregate trade in both directions.

If a foreign product can otherwise be legally imported into the USA and among USA potential purchasers there’s an effective demand for that product, the Import Certificate policy could not prevent that foreign product from being imported.

The Import Certificate policy’s concept is simple but it is not simplistic.

I would suppose the U.S. Customs Service would administrate and actually perform the assessments and the U.S. Treasury Department would issue the certificates.
....

Considering the vast quantities of materials in global trade, the US Customs Services will need several tens of thousands of employees. Of course such regulatory work has massive expenses without any real value. There would need to be massive depots for the unloading, unpacking and inspection of goods for assessment. Issuing, monitoring and tracking of certificates would require many thousands more employees and a vast administrative system. You would be better off just to have taxes on imports and of course then our goods would be taxed and noncompetitive in the global markets.

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